Shell Scripting

kidestranged · 04-24-2004, 06:33 PM

I'm writing a shell script that copies files and backs up a database. I use a PHP page on the browser to input the variables.

My question is -

How do I handle the output so that I can display it in the browser? Here is a simplified version of the script.

#!/bin/sh
cp /path/to/some_file.txt /some/other/location/new_name.txt

I want to the browser to output the results of the copy. Do I write to a text file and then have PHP read it? How should this be done?

mangeli · 04-24-2004, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by kidestranged
I'm writing a shell script that copies files and backs up a database. I use a PHP page on the browser to input the variables.

My question is -

How do I handle the output so that I can display it in the browser? Here is a simplified version of the script.

#!/bin/sh
cp /path/to/some_file.txt /some/other/location/new_name.txt

I want to the browser to output the results of the copy. Do I write to a text file and then have PHP read it? How should this be done?

I believe there is an execute command in php that when passed through a php page it will return the results in the browser window.

I would check on php.net.....

kidestranged · 04-24-2004, 08:35 PM

Thanks - I have the PHP part sorted but I'm new to shell scripting and I don't know how to test if a linux command was successful.

for the following commands:

cp /path/to/some_file.txt /some/other/location/new_name.txt
&
mysql -uuname -ppass db_name<'dump_file.sql

How can I test whether or not the copy and dump worked?
if (successful copy)
do this

if (successful database action)
do this

For those commands, linux will only output anything if they failed so how do I check for an output in a shell script?

Thanks

kidestranged · 04-25-2004, 05:39 PM

I'm going to bump this one time because I'm struggling to find my answers on Goggle.

I'm new to shell scripting but I've I do a lot of coding in PHP and C#. With these languages, there is always an exit status on commands and functions.

if (database function) {
do something
} else {
handle the error
}

The question is, how do I handle this with a shell script? If I copy a file, how do I test the success of the copy? If I run a database command from the shell, how do I know if any errors were returned?

Thanks for the help so far.

ToniT · 07-27-2004, 09:28 PM

Code:

#!/bin/sh
if cp /path/to/some_file.txt /some/other/location/new_name.txt && mysql -uuname -ppass db_name<'dump_file.sql; then 
  echo success 
else 
  echo failure 
fi

Dark_Helmet · 07-27-2004, 11:46 PM

You can access a command's return status with the $? variable. An exit status of 0 traditionally indicates success. Non-zero indicates failure, and sometimes indicates teh nature of the failure. ToniT's example uses this information implicitly, but an explicit example:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

#Assuming that your PHP gives this script the source and destination
# arguments in the first and second arguments respectively
# The double quotes are used to preserve file/path names that
# include spaces or other character that the shell might otherwise
# interpret incorrectly
cp "${1}" "${2}"
cp_exit_status=$?

if [ ${cp_exit_status} -eq 0 ] ; then
  echo Copy successful
  exit 0
else
  echo Copy failed
  exit 1
fi